Goliad

this is an a.m. radio song on riverbed static
a shimmering Texas waste where the Gulf
of Mexico rains up from sagging earth in waves of chirring heat between crooked mud green Guadalupe and San Antonio rivers

my father wheels us up secondary gravel roads
our pontiac wagon’s fat black tires
crush pebbles to dust and hubcap spokes ping
spinning gravel off into the dark

the crawling of our wheels
a music that sings all night 
like heat lighting sixty miles away
passing itself in mirrors
between dusty sheets of glass in the dark

and why is there a sense of sadness
when broad white morning bends
Goliad Mission’s archways and
agave crackle and sway
changing nothing
like sometimes windless night air
where stars sang out their own names

and i know why the Karankawa left this place
for something other than the kind of faith that brings a man to drive other men away
while their rattles snaked echoes
across giant stone floors where cool curls
down buried halls and wrought iron window rails
sunken in desolate wood
where a shadow beneath the courtyard remembers me

un-broken-in leather shoes
white 4 on a red mesh jersey
spare chaparral shade
sweat rolling and re-baking

and then a woman asks us to imagine
how anyone could live here
as if indians needed Spanish medicine
for Spanish diseases and steel
their language lost
run to death in Dog Canyon sun
under wheels
the sky
and music
which burns away their names